Chapter 7 — Goldenbridge

Neglect

Another witness stated that, when she attended secretarial college while at Goldenbridge, she felt out of place due to her appearance and clothing: When you went to that place I was about 14 and a half and all these girls coming in, I am not vain, I don’t go by appearances but my clothes were raggy compared to the young women that were going there.

This sentiment was echoed by a complainant who remembered how their clothing labelled them: ... we were labelled, we had it here, institution, Goldenbridge ... it was the way we walked, talking about walking. It was the clothes we wore. We tried to be fashionable and were big frumps.

Another witness was extremely critical of the changes of clothing and the clothing in general: There was very little changing of clothing. I think I wore – I know when I went in first we wore like what they wear in Dickens’s days, the pinafore. That was left on us for months and months and months, we didn’t change that.

Some witnesses had positive comments to make about the clothes. One such witness remembered wearing nice jumpers and good clothes on Sundays: We had jumpers, we had Sunday jumpers, red jumpers. I am sure they were red. They were good jumpers for when you are going outside, going with a lady, you had your good clothes on.

Another said: ... What was very good every year in the summer Sr Venetia would get all new clothes and they were put away for us ...

Another witness pointed out that Sr Alida looked after the girls before they left, providing them with new clothes: Say when you were 16 and you left, you always left with new clothes. She made sure you had a new – everything was new and you had a case; but if you left before you were 16 you wouldn’t get as much but once you left at 16 you were rigged out from head to toe.

The children in Goldenbridge were conscious of their institutionalised appearance, and this contributed to the feeling of inferiority recalled by so many. However, clothing was adequate and, in particular, efforts were made to provide girls with proper clothes when they left the Institution.

Aftercare did not feature prominently in the testimony of witnesses before the Committee. The Sisters appeared to be able to find positions for most of the girls when they left at 16 years of age. Until the mid-1960s, almost all the girls entered domestic service, and this was the only industrial training they received. From the early 1960s, some girls were given the opportunity of attending secretarial college and training as children’s nurses. These girls were also found jobs when they left.

Of more concern to witnesses was the lack of any preparation for dealing with the world and, in particular, the lack of any knowledge of relationships with men. Witnesses spoke of how extremely vulnerable they were on leaving the Institution. Even the circumstance of their leaving was handled in an insensitive way, according to many complainants.

For most complainants, the day of discharge was the day immediately prior to their 16th birthday. For many, although they knew this was the case, the actual discharge event appeared to be sudden and unexpected. They spoke about being completely unprepared for this and of receiving very little encouragement or support from Sr Venetia as they left what was, after all, their childhood home. One complainant recalled being terrified when she was told she was leaving Goldenbridge.

Another complainant said that every day in Goldenbridge she used to imagine walking through the gates and leaving it. When the day came that she was going home, she was petrified. She recalled being brought into a room in Goldenbridge and being told by Sr Alida that she was going: She gave me a pair of rosary beads and I left terrified, you would never believe ... I went back to my grandmother’s from Goldenbridge. I didn’t know how to speak properly. We spoke our own language, I know that you will find that strange. We were only children, we didn’t grow up. We spoke differently to each other. If you were brought up for nine years in a home you all speak the same, you all speak the same language, I spoke this language. I was terrified of people. I walked, I had a stoop, my shoulders were bent ... I would not look at nobody. I would not look in your eyes, I couldn’t. I was afraid ... I was afraid of everything and everybody ... I didn’t know how to survive out there, this was a new world this was something.

She said that she did not feel normal when she left Goldenbridge, that she always felt bad, and she felt people were looking at her. She had no confidence and that, even now at 62 years of age, ‘I will never have confidence because Goldenbridge took everything, everything from me as a child, everything, my childhood, everything’.

This complainant said repeatedly that she was stupid and that she looked stupid, and she said that most of the children who left Goldenbridge looked stupid. She said that she was treated as a ‘bastard’ in Goldenbridge.

Although girls were placed in jobs when they left Goldenbridge they were isolated and vulnerable in the outside world because they were ill-prepared for it and many had feelings of inferiority. One of the reasons why girls were unprepared was the unworldliness of the nuns. The inadequacy of the preparation should have been addressed by the nuns in order to give the girls as much of a chance as possible in their adult life.

General conclusions

General conclusions 1. Life in Goldenbridge was full of drudgery. Children went from chores to the classroom to bead making without respite until bead making was discontinued in the mid-1960s. Staffing levels were poor, and children had to do a great deal of domestic chores. 2. Punishment in Goldenbridge was pervasive. Children were beaten for small infringements. It was unpredictable, arbitrary and led to a climate of fear, although after the 1960s it decreased significantly. 3. Goldenbridge was a closed institution with little or no contact with the outside world, and children became institutionalised as a result and suffered in many ways when they left. 4. Girls who were incapable of making their way in the outside world were kept on as carers, despite being wholly unsuitable. They treated children brutally and were able to do so without any control by the Sisters in charge. 5. Activities which need not have been abusive became so when excessive demands were placed on the children and fear of punishment was constant. 6. Some children were treated less harshly because they had relatives to look out for them. 7. There were no internal controls by the Congregation. Much of what was learned about the Christian Brothers’ industrial schools came from their own Visitation Reports but there was no such system in Goldenbridge. The Carysfort Mother House appeared to offer no guidance or supervision whatsoever and even the nuns in the Goldenbridge convent adopted a ‘hands off’ approach. 8. The regime in Goldenbridge, which was flawed from the outset, did not change for 30 years. The Congregation did not learn from its experience of childcare. Other Orders, such as the Sisters of Charity, identified the need to rethink the system of large institutions caring for large numbers of children. The Sisters of Mercy have lamented the lack of any childcare training in the State, but organisations entrusted with the care of children could have developed training programmes for their members. The Congregation had the experience of childcare but failed to develop expertise. 9. The regime became kinder and more child-centred in the late 1960s and the number of complainants was small, which suggests that even though Goldenbridge was still a large, crowded institution, better management could have an important bearing on the quality of life of the children. 10. The Sisters in charge during the relevant period were harsh and unfeeling towards the children. Humiliation and degradation were constant occurrences, both from the Sisters and from the lay staff. The children felt that no one cared for them and that they did not matter. Even the members of the Congregation who spoke to the Committee failed to appreciate that Goldenbridge was abusive because of the attitude of the Sisters who ran it. Hard work and dedication were no excuses for a regime that made children feel despised and worthless. 11. The Department of Education inspections observed some problems but missed others. The Inspector did address the issues of food and clothing in the 1940s but, once these obvious problems were solved, the inspector did not report other, real problems of Goldenbridge, including the excessive chores, the pressures of bead making and the emotional deprivation. These problems could have been discovered by speaking to the children.